FTR #1090 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 5 (Destabilizing China)

We begin with brief review of the Falun Gong cult and its con­nec­tions. Part of a con­stel­la­tion of orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als work­ing with for­mer Trump chief of staff Steve Ban­non to neu­tral­ize Chi­na, Falun Gong has gar­nered the sup­port of CIA deriv­a­tive Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors in the effort.

The Falun Gong teach­es that: post menopausal women can regain men­stru­a­tion, con­sid­ered manda­to­ry for spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion; gays are demo­nized; mixed race peo­ple are demo­nized; cult mem­bers are dis­cour­aged from seek­ing mod­ern med­ical treat­ment; space aliens are inhab­it­ing human bod­ies and are respon­si­ble for mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy such as air­planes and com­put­ers; tiny beings are said to be invad­ing human bod­ies and caus­ing “bad kar­ma;” mas­ter Li Hongzhi knows the secrets of the uni­verse; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can lev­i­tate and walk through walls; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can install a phys­i­cal “Falun”–swastika–in the abdomen of fol­low­ers which revolves in var­i­ous direc­tions; Falun Gong teach­ing demo­nizes fem­i­nists and pop­u­lar music; there will be a “Judge­ment Day” on which com­mu­nists and oth­ers deemed unwor­thy by mas­ter Li Hongzhi will be neu­tral­ized.

Falun Gong–largely through its Epoch Times newspaper–has estab­lished a major social media pres­ence and is a key ally of Pres­i­dent Trump’s re-elec­tion effort: “. . . . In April, at the height of its ad spend­ing, videos from the Epoch Media Group, which includes The Epoch Times and dig­i­tal video out­let New Tang Dynasty, or NTD, com­bined for around 3 bil­lion views on Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter, rank­ing 11th among all video cre­ators across plat­forms and out­rank­ing every oth­er tra­di­tion­al news pub­lish­er, accord­ing to data from the social media ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Tubular.That engage­ment has made The Epoch Times a favorite of the Trump fam­i­ly and a key com­po­nent of the president’s re-elec­tion cam­paign.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The enor­mous amount of mon­ey under con­trol of Falun Gong; sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church; the anti-com­mu­nist dog­ma of the cult (again, not unlike the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church); the role of the inter­net and social media–Facebook, in particular–in the growth of Falun Gong’s oper­a­tions; the spin put by NBC on Falun Gong’s beliefs.

Memorial Day Weekend Broadcast: Sunday, May 26th and Monday, May 27th

On Sun­day 5/26/2019 from 11 a.m. (Pacif­ic Time) until 7pm, and on Mon­day, 5/27/2019 from 10am until 7pm, KFJC-FM will fea­ture hours of pro­gram­ming doc­u­ment­ing the pro­found con­nec­tions of U.S. indus­try and finance to the fas­cist pow­ers of World War II. In the decades since the end of the Sec­ond World War, much has been writ­ten about the war and fas­cism, the dri­ving force behind the aggres­sion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed that con­flict. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what has been said and writ­ten has failed to iden­ti­fy and ana­lyze the caus­es, nature and method­ol­o­gy of fascism—German Nation­al Social­ism or “Nazism” in par­tic­u­lar. A deep­er, more accu­rate analy­sis was pre­sent­ed in pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly vol­umes pub­lished dur­ing, or in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the Sec­ond World War. . . . . Fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices. Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive “reg­u­la­tion” here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as “glob­al­iza­tion.” This rein­vest­ment of the prof­its of the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Japan­ese and Ger­man strate­gic heavy indus­try was the cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing World War II. On Sun­day, we will high­light the Amer­i­can-Ger­man indus­tri­al axis and its var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions. On Mon­day, we will explore the Amer­i­can-Japan­ese indus­tri­al axis.

FTR #1020 Baba Ramdev, Hindutva Fascism and Geopolitics

The pri­ma­ry “jump­ing off point” of this pro­gram and the foun­da­tion of the pre­vi­ous two broad­casts is the polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial career of Baba Ramdev. A major sup­port­er of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS, for which the BJP is a polit­i­cal front, Ramdev runs a high­ly suc­cess­ful busi­ness career cen­tered on the teach­ing of yoga and the mar­ket­ing of “ayurvedic” foods, cos­met­ics and med­i­cines. In turn, his busi­ness inter­ests are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #‘s 795, 988 and 989, 990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP Par­ty and sup­port­ive ele­ments, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism through the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP run­ning India, Ramde­v’s Patan­jali food busi­ness has also dove­tailed direct­ly with Indi­a’s mil­i­tary devel­op­ment and poten­tial strate­gic inter­ests. A thought-pro­vok­ing and pos­si­bly valid com­par­i­son might be seen between Ramde­v’s oper­a­tions and the oper­a­tions of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the Moon oper­a­tion as an exten­sion around the world and down the decades of the Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties of Japan. A reli­gious, com­mer­cial and fas­cist polit­i­cal enti­ty, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church bears many strik­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Ramdev orga­ni­za­tion.

Begin­ning with review of ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional links between RSS Hin­dut­va fas­cists and the fol­low­ers of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni, we high­light key fea­tures of what may seem to many to be a clas­sic case of polit­i­cal “strange bed­fel­lows.” Key con­sid­er­a­tions in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fas­cist affin­i­ty include:

1.–Opposition to the British Empire (as con­sti­tut­ed), admi­ra­tion for the domes­tic agen­das of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the mil­i­tary prowess shown by the Euro­pean Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades pri­or to that momen­tous event, senior RSS mem­bers had direct links to both Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Ger­many. Part of the RSS’ fas­ci­na­tion with these total­i­tar­i­an regimes was their shared oppo­si­tion to the British Empire — how­ev­er, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as mul­ti­tudes of oth­er Hin­du nation­al­ists) admired the way Mus­soli­ni and Hitler reor­ga­nized their respec­tive nations so quick­ly from the wreck­age of war to build a pow­er­ful econ­o­my and mil­i­tary under the ban­ner of patri­o­tism and nation­al­ism. . . .”
2.–The stud­ied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affin­i­ty: ” . . . . Marzia Caso­lari, an Ital­ian schol­ar who stud­ied Indi­an pol­i­tics, once wrote of RSS’ con­nec­tions with Euro­pean fas­cism: The exis­tence of direct con­tacts between the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the [Ital­ian] Fas­cist regime, includ­ing Mus­soli­ni, and Hin­du nation­al­ists demon­strates that Hin­du nation­al­ism had much more than an abstract inter­est in the ide­ol­o­gy and prac­tice of fas­cism. The inter­est of Indi­an Hin­du nation­al­ists in fas­cism and Mus­soli­ni must not be con­sid­ered as dic­tat­ed by an occa­sion­al curios­i­ty, con­fined to a few indi­vid­u­als; rather, it should be con­sid­ered as the cul­mi­nat­ing result of the atten­tion that Hin­du nation­al­ists… focused on Ital­ian dic­ta­tor­ship and its leader. To them, fas­cism appeared to be an exam­ple of con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”
3.–Belief in the com­mon, mytho­log­i­cal “Aryan” ori­gins of India and Ger­many: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and imagery came from the sym­bols and his­to­ry of ancient India – indeed, the infa­mous Nazi swasti­ka was based on a Hin­du sym­bol of strength and good for­tune.
More­over, the leg­endary his­to­ry (some would say, myth) of the inva­sion of pre­his­toric India by the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Aryan’ tribes would (cen­turies lat­er) pro­vide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super mas­ter race’ that was des­tined to dom­i­nate the world. . . .”
4.–The enthu­si­as­tic embrace of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni by V.D. Savarkar, the ide­o­log­i­cal founder of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and the pri­ma­ry archi­tect of Gand­hi’s assas­si­na­tion: ” . . . . Per­haps there was no greater admir­er of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, anoth­er lead­ing mem­ber of RSS. In a speech deliv­ered in 1940 (after the Sec­ond World War had com­menced), Savarkar said: ‘There is no rea­son to sup­pose that Hitler must be a human mon­ster because he pass­es off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls him­self a Demo­c­rat. Nazism proved unde­ni­ably the sav­ior of Ger­many under the set of cir­cum­stances Ger­many was placed in.’ . . .”
5.–The Hin­du Mahasab­ha’s sup­port for a Hitler/RSS con­junc­tion: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hin­du nation­al­ists also derid­ed Gand­hi for oppos­ing Nazism and fas­cism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hin­du Mahasab­ha (Hin­du Par­ty) inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed Ger­many with Indi­an cul­ture and peo­ple. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan cul­ture, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Swasti­ka, her patron­age of Vedic learn­ing and the ardent cham­pi­onship of the tra­di­tion of Indo-Ger­man­ic civ­i­liza­tion are wel­comed by the reli­gious and sen­si­ble Hin­dus of India with a jubi­lant hope,’ the spokesman blus­tered. ‘Only a few Social­ists head­ed by… Nehru have cre­at­ed a bub­ble of resent­ment against the present gov­ern­ment of Ger­many, but their activ­i­ties are far from hav­ing any sig­nif­i­cance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s cru­sade against the ene­mies of Aryan cul­ture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their sens­es and awak­en the Indi­an Hin­dus for the restora­tion of their lost glo­ry. . . .’ ”
6.–Other RSS lead­ers saw use­ful sim­i­lar­i­ties in the eth­nic chau­vin­ist phi­los­o­phy of both Hitler and Hin­dut­va fas­cism. ” . . . . Anoth­er senior RSS mem­ber, Mad­hav Sadashiv Gol­walkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ide­ol­o­gy should be applied to India. ‘Ger­man race pride has now become the top­ic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the puri­ty of the race and its cul­ture, Ger­many shocked the world by her purg­ing the coun­try of the Semit­ic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its high­est has been man­i­fest­ed here. Ger­many has also shown how well-nigh impos­si­ble it is for races and cul­tures, hav­ing dif­fer­ences going to the root, to be assim­i­lat­ed into one unit­ed whole, a good les­son for us in Hin­dus­tan [India] to learn and prof­it by.’ Gol­walkar enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly advo­cat­ed for an India dom­i­nat­ed by Hin­dus. ‘There are only two cours­es open to the for­eign ele­ments, either to merge them­selves in the nation­al race and adopt its cul­ture, or to live at its mer­cy so long as the nation­al race may allow them to do so and to quit the coun­try at the sweet will of the nation­al race,’ he wrote. . . . ”
7.–The eth­nic ide­o­log­i­cal par­a­digm of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and Nazism meld well: ” . . . . If one were to replace ‘Hin­du’ with ‘Ger­man,’ Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exact­ly. . . .”
8.–Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS eth­nic the­o­ry and pol­i­cy as con­verg­ing: ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hin­dus should rule India and oth­ers should either be expelled or merged into the Hin­du major­i­ty. ‘The Aryans who set­tled in India at the dawn of his­to­ry already formed a nation, now embod­ied in the Hin­dus,’ he wrote. ‘Hin­dus are bound togeth­er not only by the love they bear to a com­mon father­land and by the com­mon blood that cours­es through their veins and keeps our hearts throb­bing and our affec­tion warm but also by the of the com­mon homage we pay to our great civ­i­liza­tion, our Hin­du cul­ture. . . .”

We review of a miss­ing and very pos­si­bly impor­tant chap­ter in Ramde­v’s per­son­al his­to­ry: miss­ing years in his young adult­hood, rais­ing the ques­tion of where he was and what was he doing? We won­der, in that same con­text, who put up the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Ramde­v’s yoga and ayurvedic prod­ucts busi­ness­es: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . . As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion . . . .”

In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing Yoga’s well-doc­u­ment­ed fit­ness ben­e­fits, Ramdev presents Yoga as a vehi­cle for recon­nect­ing Indi­ans with their myth­ic past. In fact, the dis­ci­pline is root­ed in more recent and Euro­pean-import­ed cul­ture: “. . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders, from ancient Rome to the Zion­ists, have fos­tered about them­selves. The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. . . .”

In fact, a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to con­tem­po­rary Yoga dis­ci­pline was made by a Dan­ish Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er named Niels Bukh. ” . . . . Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. . . .”

More about Niels Bukh: ” . . . . His sys­tem of exer­cise became high­ly pop­u­lar in Ger­many, and in 1933 Bukh pub­licly expressed his alle­giance to the Nation­al Social­ist cause and its aim of improv­ing the health of the Aryan race through gym­nas­tics. . . .”

Yoga’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in Weimar Ger­many trans­lat­ed into an affin­i­ty for the dis­ci­pline expressed by Nazi SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler, who also saw the phys­i­cal reg­i­men as an exten­sion of the ancient “Aryan” past of India. That myth­i­cal Aryan past also became part of SS and Nazi atavis­tic occult ide­ol­o­gy. ” . . . yoga was rec­om­mend­ed to death camp guards in Nazi Ger­many. But that’s exact­ly what his­to­ri­an and yoga expert Math­ias Tietke found as he researched his new book, ‘Yoga In Nation­al Social­ism’. . . .”

More about the SS/Yoga con­nec­tion: ” . . . . It was seized on by race experts in the par­ty as being the pur­suit of ‘Ayran’ peo­ple. Jakob Wil­helm Hauer, an S.S. cap­tain and yoga expert, who influ­enced his chief Himm­ler and con­vinced him that ‘yoga can inter­nal­ly arm us and pre­pare us for the forth­com­ing bat­tles.’ . . . . Himm­ler, obsessed as he was with hocus-pocus race the­o­ries and mys­ti­cism relat­ing to his S.S. ‘super­men,’ car­ried around a Ger­man copy of the Bha­gavad Gita with him wher­ev­er he went. He regard­ed the ancient San­skrit epic as being a blue­print for cru­el­ty and ter­ror, using it, said Tietke, to ulti­mate­ly jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust. He wrote; ‘He iden­ti­fied him­self and the SS with the old Indi­an Ksha­triya caste and its pub­li­cized atti­tude of unscrupu­lous killing for one’s ‘high­er pur­pose.’ . . . . ”

This dove­tails with the SS mythology/ideology, which saw the SS as the embod­i­ment and ful­fill­ment of the “Aryan” race.

Next, we review of the sweet­heart land deals giv­en to the Morit­o­mo Gakuen school in Japan by the Abe gov­ern­ment and com­par­isons between that arrange­ment and the bar­gain-base­ment land pur­chas­es afford­ed the Ramdev oper­a­tion by the Modi gov­ern­ment.

We then “dol­ly out,” so to speak, and begin to exam­ine the Modi/RSS/Ramdev axis in a broad­er polit­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

We review the strong links between “Team Trump” and the Modi/BJP/RSS axis. There are also strong links between Tul­si Gab­bard, the left-cov­er Hin­dut­va fas­cist who nom­i­nat­ed Bernie Sanders for Pres­i­dent in 2016 and The Modi/BJP/RSS axis., as well as con­nec­tions between “Team Trump” and Gab­bard.

We also review Pierre Omid­yar’s sig­nif­i­cant role in both India and Ukraine:

Omid­yar’s work in both Ukraine and India–operating as an appar­ent asset of U.S. intel­li­gence and (per­haps) the Under­ground Reich–are best viewed in the con­text of the Earth Island and a flank­ing maneu­ver on Rus­sia and Chi­na.

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

With the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion fas­cists in pow­er via the Maid­an coup and a par­lia­men­tary coali­tion gov­ern­ment with Petro Poroshenko, pres­sure is being put direct­ly on Rus­si­a’s flank. With the Hin­dut­va fas­cists of Naren­dra Modi/BJP/RSS in pow­er in India, pres­sure is being put on Chi­na’s flank: “U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense James Mat­tis announced a momen­tous shift in Amer­i­can glob­al strate­gic pol­i­cy in a lit­tle noticed state­ment on May 30. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand (PACOM), which over­sees all U.S. mil­i­tary forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacif­ic Com­mand (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mat­tis explained, reflects “the increas­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the Indi­an and Pacif­ic Oceans,” as well as Washington’s deter­mi­na­tion to remain the dom­i­nant pow­er in both. Such a name change may not sound like much, but some­day you may look back and real­ize that it couldn’t have been more con­se­quen­tial or omi­nous. Think of it as a sig­nal that the U.S. mil­i­tary is already set­ting the stage for even­tu­al con­fronta­tion with Chi­na. . . .On June 8th, for exam­ple, the DoD launched Mal­abar 2018, a joint Pacif­ic Ocean naval exer­cise involv­ing forces from India, Japan, and the Unit­ed States. Incor­po­rat­ing once neu­tral India into America’s anti-Chi­nese “Pacif­ic” alliance sys­tem in this and oth­er ways has, in fact, become a major twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry goal of the Pen­ta­gon, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant new threat to Chi­na. . . .”

Of sig­nif­i­cance for us in the con­text of anti-Chi­na/Earth Island geopo­lit­i­cals are the anti-com­mu­nist util­i­ty of the BJP/RSS/Ramdev nexus and the dove­tail­ing of a Ramdev/Patanjali instal­la­tion in Assam with the needs of the Indi­an Air Force for a base in that area:

1.–Ramdev and the B.J.P. appear to have util­i­ty as vehi­cles to erad­i­cate Com­mu­nist influ­ence in parts of India: ” . . . . The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. . . . All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a ‘saf­fron wave’ that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. . . .”
2.–Also of sig­nif­i­cance is the dove­tail­ing of Modi/B.J.P. assist­ed Patan­jali oper­a­tions with the Indi­an military–specifically, the Indi­an Air Force: “. . . . After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a know­ing look, ‘We are near Chi­na.’ Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a ‘state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da. . . .”

We con­clude the pro­gram with review of a Hin­dut­va chant used by Baba Ramdev and Naren­dra Modi.

In our pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have spo­ken of Ramde­v’s use of a Modi/BJP/RSS invo­ca­tion, high­light­ing Ramde­v’s work­ing of the “fascis”–the “bun­dle” of accolytes–in Fuhrer/­Duce-like fash­ion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — ‘India my moth­er­land is great’ — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment. . . .”

Naren­dra Modi echoed this in his Sep­tem­ber 2015 speech at the SAP Cen­ter in San Jose. (As men­tioned above, Tul­si Gab­bard helped arrange Mod­i’s tour.) An audio excerpt con­cludes this pro­gram. For con­ve­nience, we have includ­ed a por­tion of text from Mod­i’s speech.

“Com­plete Text and Video of Naren­dra Modi’s Speech at SAP Cen­ter: Watch;” India West Online; 9/29/2015.

. . . . Please repeat after me “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” Say it loud­ly; I want the voice to boom all the way to India, Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats), Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats) . . . .

FTR #‘s 1018, 1019 Baba Ramdev and Hindutva Fascism, Parts 1 and 2

The pri­ma­ry focal point of these two pro­grams and sup­ple­men­tal dis­cus­sion in the pro­gram to fol­low is the polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial career of Baba Ramdev. A major sup­port­er of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS, for which the BJP is a polit­i­cal front, Ramdev runs a high­ly suc­cess­ful busi­ness career cen­tered on the teach­ing of yoga and the mar­ket­ing of “ayurvedic” foods, cos­met­ics and med­i­cines. In turn, his busi­ness inter­ests are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #‘s 795, 988 and 989, 990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP Par­ty and sup­port­ive ele­ments, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism through the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP run­ning India, Ramde­v’s Patan­jali food busi­ness has also dove­tailed direct­ly with Indi­a’s mil­i­tary devel­op­ment and poten­tial strate­gic inter­ests. A thought-pro­vok­ing and pos­si­bly valid com­par­i­son might be seen between Ramde­v’s oper­a­tions and the oper­a­tions of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the Moon oper­a­tion as an exten­sion around the world and down the decades of the Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties of Japan. A reli­gious, com­mer­cial and fas­cist polit­i­cal enti­ty, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church bears many strik­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Ramdev orga­ni­za­tion.

This will be dis­cussed at greater length in FTR #1020.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of Ramdev and his polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial under­tak­ings include:

1.–Ramdev’s ide­o­log­i­cal res­o­nance with the Hin­dut­va fas­cist invo­ca­tion of an ide­al­ized mys­ti­cal past: ” . . . . [BJP head and mur­der sus­pect] Amit Shah told the crowd that the B.J.P. want­ed Ramdev to join them in reform­ing the Indi­an edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem. One of the party’s new pri­or­i­ties is an ambi­tious effort to rewrite Indi­an school text­books to assert Hin­du pri­ma­cy. Mahesh Shar­ma, India’s cul­ture min­is­ter and an avowed fol­low­er of the RSS, has said he hopes to rewrite the con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive about India as a mul­ti­cul­tur­al tapes­try, and to incul­cate the belief that the ancient Hin­du scrip­tures are his­tor­i­cal facts, not leg­ends. ‘There is a lot of work to be done in edu­ca­tion,’ Shah said on the sta­di­um floor, just after the pre­miere of Ramdev’s biopic. ‘Because of our saints and our heroes — all this needs to be brought into our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem.’ . . . Ramdev walked to the lectern, smil­ing gra­cious­ly at the gag­gle of B.J.P. lumi­nar­ies onstage. He pledged his sup­port to Modi and Shah, and their efforts to trans­form India. . . . ‘I ded­i­cate my time and ener­gy to the cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al edu­ca­tion of the coun­try, to bring our coun­try the great knowl­edge of the Vedas.’ . . .  ‘We will see an Indi­an edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy in this coun­try . . .  Before step­ping down, he pumped his fist once again in a chant of ‘India my moth­er­land is great.’ The crowd roared. . . .”
2.–Ramdev’s fre­quent invok­ing of the “fascis”–the “bun­dle” of accolytes and his work­ing of the crowd in Fuhrer/­Duce-like fash­ion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — ‘India my moth­er­land is great’ — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment. . . .”
3.–The fus­ing of Ramde­v’s polit­i­cal endeav­ors on behalf of Modi and the RSS with his com­mer­cial activ­i­ties: ” . . . . Ramdev has been a promi­nent voice on the Hin­du right, and his tac­it endorse­ment dur­ing the land­mark 2014 cam­paign helped bring Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi to pow­er. He appeared along­side Modi on sev­er­al occa­sions, singing the leader’s prais­es and urg­ing Indi­ans to turn out for him. Ramdev has called Modi ‘a close friend,’ and the prime min­is­ter pub­licly lauds Patanjali’s array of ayurvedic prod­ucts — med­i­cines, cos­met­ics and food­stuffs. . . . ”
4.–The favored treat­ment afford­ed Ramdev and his Patan­jali busi­ness by the Modi regime: ” . . . . One thing is cer­tain: Ramdev has received extra­or­di­nary favors from the Indi­an gov­ern­ment since Modi was elect­ed. Soon after the 2014 elec­tion, B.J.P.-led state gov­ern­ments across India began facil­i­tat­ing steep dis­counts on land pur­chas­es for Patan­jali. . . . In the largest of these deals, Patan­jali was giv­en a 1,200-acre par­cel of land in the east­ern state of Assam at no cost. Accord­ing to state leg­is­la­ture doc­u­ments I was shown by a local aca­d­e­m­ic, the deal was made by an agency con­trolled by the Bodoland People’s Front, a par­ty aligned with the B.J.P. Last year a Reuters inves­ti­ga­tion doc­u­ment­ed sev­er­al dis­count­ed land sales and leas­es in three oth­er Indi­an states that saved the com­pa­ny a total of $46 mil­lion. . . .”
5.–Ramdev, the  B.J.P. as vehi­cles to erad­i­cate Com­mu­nist influ­ence in parts of India: The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. . . . All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a ‘saf­fron wave’ that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. . . .”
6.–The dove­tail­ing of Modi/B.J.P. assist­ed Patan­jali oper­a­tions with the Indi­an military–specifically, the Indi­an Air Force:  “. . . . After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a know­ing look, ‘We are near Chi­na.’ Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a ‘state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da. . . .”
7.–Evident sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ramde­v’s “swadeshi”–“economic nationalism”–with Mus­solin­i’s con­cept of the Cor­po­rate State and Hitler’s Nation­al Social­ism: ” . . . . Ramdev has led vast­ly pop­u­lar cam­paigns against cor­rup­tion, don­ning the man­tle of swadeshi, or Indi­an eco­nom­ic nation­al­ism, to cast for­eign com­pa­nies as neo­colo­nial vil­lains. In a sense, Ramdev has changed Hin­duism itself. . . .”
8.–Evident sim­i­lar­i­ties between the “eco­nom­ic xeno­pho­bia” pro­pelling Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs and trade wars and the swadeshi/economic nation­al­ism of Ramdev and com­pa­ny: ” . . . . When it comes to mar­ket­ing against for­eign com­peti­tors, they wield their holi­ness like a club. One Patan­jali ad runs: ‘As East India Com­pa­ny plun­dered our coun­try for 200 years like­wise these multi­na­tion­als are exploit­ing our coun­try by sell­ing their harm­ful and dan­ger­ous chem­i­cal prod­ucts. Beware!’ . . . .”
9.–Ramdev’s seam­less meld­ing with the anti-Mus­lim ide­ol­o­gy of the RSS, man­i­fest­ing the strate­gic and tac­ti­cal demo­niza­tion of the “malev­o­lent oth­er” that char­ac­ter­izes so many iter­a­tions of fas­cism: ” . . . . Ramdev has changed Hin­duism itself. His blend of patri­ot­ic fer­vor, health and reli­gious piety flows seam­less­ly into the hard­er ver­sions of Hin­du nation­al­ism, which are often open­ly hos­tile to India’s 172 mil­lion Mus­lims. Although Ramdev prefers to speak of Indi­an sol­i­dar­i­ty, his B.J.P. allies rou­tine­ly invoke an Islam­ic threat and ral­ly crowds with vows to build tem­ples on the sites of medieval mosques. . . . .”
10.–Ramdev’s atavis­tic pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the myth­i­cal­ly ide­al­ized past anti-Mus­lim fer­vor at times bor­ders on incite­ment to vio­lence: ” . . . . And the nation, in Ramdev’s telling, is sub­tly twinned with a his­to­ry and cul­ture that is dis­tinct­ly Hin­du: yoga, ayurvedic med­i­cine and the ancient Vedic scrip­tures from which they are said to have emerged. Some­times the hints are not so sub­tle. Two years ago, when a Mus­lim politi­cian refused to chant a nation­al­ist slo­gan, Ramdev laid into him at a right-wing ral­ly, say­ing that were it not for his respect for the law, “we would behead hun­dreds of thou­sands” of such peo­ple. A court lat­er issued a war­rant for Ramdev’s arrest, though the mat­ter appears to have been dropped. . . .”
11.–Similarities between Ramdev and Trump: ” . . . . In his own way, Ramdev is India’s answer to Don­ald Trump, and there is much spec­u­la­tion that he may run for prime min­is­ter him­self. Like Trump, he heads a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar empire. And like Trump, he is a bom­bas­tic TV per­son­al­i­ty whose rela­tion­ship with truth is elas­tic; he can­not resist a brand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty — his name and face are every­where in India. . . .”
12.–Ramdev’s manip­u­la­tion of the actu­al his­to­ry of Yoga to fit into his “Ancient Vedic” the­o­log­i­cal pol­i­tics: ” . . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders. . . . The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. [The asso­ci­a­tion between Nazism and yoga will be high­light­ed lat­er on in the discussion–D.E.] . . .”
13.–A miss­ing and very pos­si­bly impor­tant chap­ter in Ramde­v’s per­son­al his­to­ry: miss­ing years in his young adult­hood, rais­ing the ques­tion of where he was and what was he doing? We won­der, in that same con­text, who put up the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Ramde­v’s yoga and ayurvedic prod­ucts busi­ness­es: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . .  As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion . . . .”
14.–Ramdev has been accused of some dark acts, includ­ing foul play: ” . . . . One for­mer high-lev­el exec­u­tive at Patan­jali, who worked at the com­pa­ny for sev­er­al years, spoke to me on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, say­ing he feared retal­i­a­tion. When I asked him why he left, he said of Ramdev: ‘Because he’s a crook. Because he’s a hyp­ocrite.’ He rat­tled off a sheaf of shock­ing claims about fraud and employ­ee abuse. . . . . One sto­ry involved Ramdev’s broth­er, Ram Bharat, who was arrest­ed in 2013 and accused of kid­nap­ping and impris­on­ing a work­er sus­pect­ed of theft (the charges were lat­er dropped). Anoth­er for­mer Patan­jali exec­u­tive told me sim­i­lar sto­ries and added that he began receiv­ing threat­en­ing phone calls after he refused to facil­i­tate what he saw as kick­back schemes. He com­plained to Balkr­ish­na, he said, but the calls con­tin­ued and — feel­ing his life might be in dan­ger — he resigned. . . .”
15.–Ramdev’s grav­i­tas has spawned fear in crit­ics: ” . . . . One Assamese uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, who asked not to be named because he feared for his safe­ty, told me that Ramdev had abet­ted the RSS’s efforts to ‘ques­tion all oth­er reli­gions here, any­thing non-Hin­du.’ He also said Patan­jali — embold­ened by its ties to the Modi gov­ern­ment — had run roughshod over laws reg­u­lat­ing the har­vest of med­i­c­i­nal plants. . . .”
16.–Ramdev has been sus­pect­ed of foul play: ” . . . . In 2007, Ramdev’s own guru, a man named Shankar Dev, dis­ap­peared with­out a trace after falling into pover­ty and ill­ness, and ques­tions were raised about Ramdev’s neglect of him. (Because Dev ini­ti­at­ed Ramdev into monk­hood, Ramdev would have been expect­ed to treat him like a par­ent.) In 2010, Rajeev Dix­it, one of Ramdev’s clos­est advis­ers, who taught him about swadeshi eco­nom­ics and helped make Patan­jali a nation­al brand, died sud­den­ly. Some of his friends believe that Ramdev resent­ed Dixit’s own ris­ing celebri­ty, and they pub­licly spec­u­lat­ed about foul play. . . .”
17.–Similarities between the RSS/Ramdev polit­i­cal agen­da and ide­ol­o­gy and Hitler’s hail­ing of Nation­al Social­ism as cre­at­ing a “new man.” ” . . . . Patan­jali ran more than 380 work­shops for prospec­tive employ­ees, where it taught a ‘val­ue sys­tem.’ Assam’s peo­ple, he explained, had ‘bad habits,’ includ­ing eat­ing non­veg­e­tar­i­an food and a lack of prop­er respect for the nation. ‘They’ve been lis­ten­ing to cor­rupt pol­i­tics from cor­rupt peo­ple for too long,’ he said. ‘We take what our sages said thou­sands of years ago and put it to use. We didn’t invent it. We took what’s avail­able in our scrip­tures and put it in a mod­ern for­mat.’ In oth­er words, they incul­cate Hin­dut­va. . . .”

Update on “Partying Like It’s 1932” (FTR #‘s 969 & 970)

In FTR #‘s 969 and 970, we exam­ined the resur­gence of fas­cism in Japan. A cen­tral ele­ment in that analy­sis is the role of schools used by the patri­ot­ic and ultra­na­tion­al­ist soci­eties as bases for polit­i­cal sub­ver­sion and ultra nation­al­ism: “. . . . In 1939, his [Kos­aburo Tachibana’s] admir­ers enabled him to estab­lish a school. He called it the Native-Land-Lov­ing School (Aiky­o­juku). Every­body in Japan with a mes­sage to deliv­er or an axe to grind opens a school. . . . Those schools in the hands of the patri­ot­ic soci­eties are at once a method of train­ing young men for strong-arm work and a plau­si­ble excuse for extort­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the rich and timid. . . .“The Native-Land-Lov­ing School is sim­i­lar to the Morit­o­mo Gakuen, that was assist­ed by Akie Abe, the wife of the ultra­na­tion­al­ist Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter: ” . . . . But last month, the Finance Min­istry said an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that bureau­crats had tam­pered with offi­cial doc­u­ments relat­ed to the sale of pub­lic land to an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive edu­ca­tion group, known as Morit­o­mo Gakuen, at a steeply dis­count­ed price. Mr. Abe’s wife, Akie, served as a one­time hon­orary prin­ci­pal of a planned ele­men­tary prin­ci­pal of a planned ele­men­tary school that Morit­o­mo want­ed to build on the dis­put­ed land. In one of the most dam­ag­ing find­ings, the min­istry said that offi­cials had scrubbed Mrs. Abe’s name and alleged remarks encour­ag­ing the deal from the doc­u­ments when they were first sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment, known in Japan as the Diet. Then this month, the Finance Min­istry told Par­lia­ment that a bureau­crat had urged a lawyer for Morit­o­mo to lie about how much it would cost to remove garbage from the pub­lic land in order to jus­ti­fy the sale at a dis­count­ed price. . . .”

FTR #1003 School Shootings and Fascist Groups, Part 2

Pub­lic schools and pub­lic edu­ca­tion are, and for many years have been, the focal point of right-wing activ­i­ty. From dis­sat­is­fac­tion over man­dat­ed school deseg­re­ga­tion to oppo­si­tion to the judi­cial ban on prayer in pub­lic schools to the present-day dra­con­ian slash­ing of pub­lic edu­ca­tion budges, the right has attacked pub­lic edu­ca­tion. At the same time, the right has pro­mot­ed the use of pub­lic funds for parochial schools and home school­ing as alter­na­tives to pub­lic edu­ca­tion.

The for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence of pub­lic school atten­dance might well be viewed as fun­da­men­tal to young peo­ples’ social­iza­tion process–learning to share, acquir­ing tol­er­ance for those of dif­fer­ent back­grounds and learn­ing the basics of civic life  in Amer­i­ca.

Pub­lic schools have also come under attack–quite literally–from armed fas­cists.

This is the sec­ond pro­gram deal­ing with school shoot­ings and the role fas­cist groups play in the devel­op­ment of such inci­dents. The broad­cast begins with a brief sum­ma­ry and recap of key points of dis­cus­sion from FTR #1002. They include:

1.-Patrick Pur­dy’s appar­ent links to Aryan Nations.
2.-Purdy’s anti-Asian xeno­pho­bia, deem­ing that Amer­i­cans were being edged out in their own home­land.
3.-The Order’s attempts at devel­op­ing mind con­trol tech­niques.
4.-Purdy’s involve­ment with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.
5.-The pro­found effect of school shoot­ings on both par­ents and stu­dents of affect­ed insti­tu­tions. School shoot­ings fun­da­men­tal­ly under­mine peo­ples’ sense of com­fort and cre­ate an anx­i­ety con­ducive to the imple­men­ta­tion of total­i­tar­i­an­ism.
6.-The pro­vi­sion of Oliv­er North’s mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans to use para­mil­i­tary right-wingers as fed­er­al deputies.

Dis­cus­sion pro­ceeds to the Flori­da high school shoot­ing. Mort Sahl’s obser­va­tion decades ago that “A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet” is exem­pli­fied by jour­nal­ists’ retrac­tion of the sto­ry of Park­land, Flori­da shoot­er Niko­las Cruz being affil­i­at­ed with the ROF because of what might be termed “reverse trolling.” A post on a chat group about the Cruz/ROF link was deemed to be false. Jor­dan Jereb told jour­nal­ists that Cruz was a mem­ber of his group, but that he had­n’t seen him in a long time. He has been said to be “walk­ing that back.” Just HOW does one “walk that back?” ” . . . . The ADL said ROF leader Jor­dan Jereb told them Cruz was asso­ci­at­ed with his group. Jereb, who is based in Tal­la­has­see, said Cruz was brought into the group by anoth­er mem­ber and had par­tic­i­pat­ed in one or more ROF train­ing exer­cis­es in the Tal­la­has­see area, the ADL said. . . . Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in ‘some time’ but said ‘he knew he would get­ting this call.’ . . . .” Jereb told the ADL that ROF had not ordered Cruz to take any such action. He told ABC News he has not spo­ken to Cruz in “some time” but said “he knew he would get­ting this call.”

Whether or not Niko­las Cruz was for­mal­ly net­work­ing with the Repub­lic of Flori­da or oth­er neo-Nazi groups, he was indeed a neo-Nazi in spir­it: It turns out that Cruz had swastikas etched onto his ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines used dur­ing the attack. This reminds us of the jot­tings Patrick Edward Pur­dy had on his weapons and cloth­ing.

Cruz didn’t just sud­den­ly adopt a neo-Nazi world­view. He’s been stew­ing in these juices for years, and clear­ly had addi­tion­al men­tal health issues.

Sev­er­al fac­tors great­ly exac­er­bate the school shoot­ing phe­nom­e­non.

The Steam gam­ing app, a major dis­trib­u­tor for very pop­u­lar video games, has a neo-Nazi problem–neo-Nazis are using its chat room and voice-over-IP options to pro­mote their ide­ol­o­gy. Both the Dai­ly Stormer and Andrew Auern­heimer have Steam chat rooms, as does Atom­Waf­fen.

On these forums, there are 173 dif­fer­ent groups cham­pi­oning school shoot­ers, laud­ing them as heroes and set­ting the stage for future inci­dents. ” . . . . A lead­ing gam­ing app that is pop­u­lar with adher­ents of the neo-Nazi wing of the alt-right move­ment has at least 173 groups ded­i­cat­ed to the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of school shoot­ings, accord­ing to a report pub­lished last week by Reveal News. . . .”

In addi­tion, Nazi groups are active­ly recruit­ing depressed peo­ple! ” . . . . For years, mem­bers of the alt-right have tak­en advan­tage of the internet’s most vul­ner­a­ble, turn­ing their fear and self-loathing into vit­ri­olic extrem­ism, and thanks to the movement’s recent gal­va­niza­tion, they’re only grow­ing stronger. . . . Accord­ing to Chris­t­ian Pic­ci­oli­ni, a for­mer neo-nazi who co-found­ed the peace advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion, Life After Hate, these sort of recruit­ing tac­tics aren’t just com­mon, but sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly enforced. ‘[The recruiters] are active­ly look­ing for these kind of bro­ken indi­vid­u­als who they can promise accep­tance, who they can promise iden­ti­ty to,’ Pic­ci­oli­ni said in an inter­view with Sam Seder. . . .”

Although not includ­ed in the audio por­tion of the pro­gram due to the lim­i­ta­tions of time, we note that, in our opin­ion, the pres­ence of lethal, mil­i­tary-style firearms are not, by them­selves, the pri­ma­ry fac­tor in the epi­dem­ic of school shoot­ings and oth­er mass casu­al­ty firearms attacks. A would-be school shoot­er can always pur­chase a pump-action, 12-gauge shot­gun, saw it off and pre­cip­i­tate con­sid­er­able may­hem.

Many of the school shoot­ings have been per­formed by fas­cists of one stripe or anoth­er, man­i­fest­ing the type of actions advo­cat­ed by the likes of Michael Moy­ni­a­han, James Mason and their fel­low trav­el­ers. Mason and his role mod­el Charles Man­son are now viewed favor­ably by a seg­ment of the Nazi move­ment. The role of nihilist/fascist ide­ol­o­gy in moti­vat­ing some of the school shoot­ers should be fac­tored into the dis­cus­sion.

The role of the media in con­di­tion­ing young peo­ple to kill is a major focal point of the book On Killing by Lieu­tenant Colonel Dave Gross­man, who taught psy­chol­o­gy at West Point. From Ama­zon’s pro­mo­tion­al text for Gross­man­’s book: “The good news is that most sol­diers are loath to kill. But armies have devel­oped sophis­ti­cat­ed ways of over­com­ing this instinc­tive aver­sion. And con­tem­po­rary civil­ian soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly the media, repli­cates the army’s con­di­tion­ing tech­niques, and, accord­ing to Lt. Col. Dave Gross­man­’s the­sis, is respon­si­ble for our ris­ing rate of mur­der among the young. Upon its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion, ON KILLING was hailed as a land­mark study of the tech­niques the mil­i­tary uses to over­come the pow­er­ful reluc­tance to kill, of how killing affects sol­diers, and of the soci­etal impli­ca­tions of esca­lat­ing vio­lence. Now, Gross­man has updat­ed this clas­sic work to include infor­ma­tion on 21st-cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary con­flicts, recent trends in crime, sui­cide bomb­ings, school shoot­ings, and more. The result is a work cer­tain to be rel­e­vant and impor­tant for decades to come.”

Our high body-count movies and TV pro­grams, as well as point-and-shoot video games, accord­ing to Gross­man, repli­cate to a con­sid­er­able degree the audio-visu­al desen­si­ti­za­tion tech­niques used by con­tem­po­rary armies to help recruits over­came their inhi­bi­tions about killing. We sug­gest Gross­man­’s the­sis as a fac­tor in the school mas­sacres.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-The para­mil­i­tary right-wing Oath Keep­ers deploy­ment of heav­i­ly armed cadre out­side of schools.
2.-Discussion of how the likes of Stew­art Rhodes and his Oath Keep­ers are the type of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers who would be dep­u­tized in the event of an acti­va­tion of mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans.
3.-The online dis­par­age­ment of Park­land high school stu­dents by the “Alt-Right.”
4.-The use of the C14 mili­tias in Ukraine to enforce pub­lic order in Kiev (the cap­i­tal) and 21 oth­er cities. The orga­ni­za­tion takes its name from the 14 words of David Lane, a mem­ber of the Order. One of that group’s founders was high­light­ed at the begin­ning of FTR #1002, not­ing his quest to obtain sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry and to devel­op mind-con­trol tech­niques.

FTR #1002 School Shootings and Fascist Groups, Part 1: Purdy’s Last Stand Redux

Pub­lic schools and pub­lic edu­ca­tion are, and for many years have been, the focal point of right-wing activ­i­ty. From dis­sat­is­fac­tion over man­dat­ed school deseg­re­ga­tion to oppo­si­tion to the judi­cial ban on prayer in pub­lic schools to the present-day dra­con­ian slash­ing of pub­lic edu­ca­tion budges, the right has attacked pub­lic edu­ca­tion. At the same time, the right has pro­mot­ed the use of pub­lic funds for parochial schools and home school­ing as alter­na­tives to pub­lic edu­ca­tion.

The for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence of pub­lic school atten­dance might well be viewed as fun­da­men­tal to young peo­ples’ social­iza­tion process–learning to share, acquir­ing tol­er­ance for those of dif­fer­ent back­grounds and learn­ing the basics of civic life  in Amer­i­ca.

Pub­lic schools have also come under attack–quite literally–from armed fas­cists.

The first of a two-part series, this pro­gram con­sists almost entire­ly of a recap of mate­r­i­al from Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M55: Pur­dy’s Last Stand: The Stock­ton (CA) School­yard Mas­sacre of 1989.

Although Mr. Emory would have engaged in a more nuanced dis­cus­sion of school shoot­ings and their polit­i­cal and psy­cho-social impli­ca­tions had the pro­gram been record­ed today, there are some essen­tial ele­ments to be con­sid­ered in con­nec­tion with the event.

The syn­op­tic writ­ten descrip­tion for the pro­gram reads as fol­lows:

“Advances the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that the Stock­ton school­yard mas­sacre of Jan­u­ary 1989 may have been delib­er­ate­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed by ele­ments of the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment act­ing in com­bi­na­tion with ele­ments of the ultra-right. Patrick Edward Pur­dy mur­dered five Asian-Amer­i­can school­child­ren and then com­mit­ted sui­cide, spurring leg­is­la­tion for gun con­trol and cre­at­ing pub­lic fear and sen­ti­ment for police state tac­tics. Pur­dy had asso­ci­a­tions with Aryan Nations and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, and may have been a covert intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty pat­sy and vic­tim of mind con­trol. The broad­cast ana­lyzes a pos­si­ble intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tion to the gun con­trol move­ment with­in the larg­er back­ground of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans devel­oped by the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions.”

Again, Mr. Emory would have pre­sent­ed a more nuanced analy­sis of this event had it occurred today–almost 30 years later–critical ele­ments of the dis­sec­tion of Pur­dy’s last stand bear repeat­ing and more intense scruti­ny:

1.-Purdy’s xeno­pho­bic view of Asian-Amer­i­cans  and “immigrants”–a point of view that is held by a large por­tion of the Trump con­stituen­cy, the so-called “Alt-Right” in this coun­try and abroad, as well. Exac­er­bat­ed great­ly by eco­nom­ic depri­va­tion stem­ming from glob­al­iza­tion and the finan­cial col­lapse of 2008 and aus­ter­i­ty eco­nom­ics insti­tut­ed in the EU at the insti­ga­tion of Ger­many and the U.S. by the obstruc­tion­ist GOP Con­gres­sion­al  major­i­ty that took pow­er after the 2010 mid-term elec­tions, the fear of immi­grants is a major aspect of fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy.
2.-The gal­va­niz­ing effect on both par­ents and their chil­dren of the school shoot­ings is vital to con­sid­er. Ter­ror­ized by these events, a pop­u­lace is far more will­ing to  accept police-state tactics–creeping mar­tial law, if you will.
3.-The mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans for­mal­ized by Oliv­er North and com­pa­ny and out­ed dur­ing the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal involved the fed­er­al dep­u­ti­za­tion of para­mil­i­tary right-wing groups such as the Oath Keep­ers and Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments. Iron­i­cal­ly, much of the so-called “Alt-Right” now incor­po­rate anti-gun con­trol ide­ol­o­gy and mar­tial law plans into their world view. In Lec­ture M3, we high­light­ed how ele­ments of what are now called “Alt-Right” are play­ing into the var­i­ous sce­nar­ios they inveigh against.
4.-It is iron­ic that much of the so-called “Alt-Right” cite gun con­trol as a step toward mar­tial law. Although they are cor­rect, up to a point, they fail to real­ize that they, them­selves, will be both insti­ga­tors of, and in some cas­es, the enforcers for, that very same mar­tial law!
5.-Public edu­ca­tion has long been a tar­get of the far-right, which attacked school inte­gra­tion in the 1950’s, 60’s and ’70s, the ban­ning of prayer in pub­lic schools and, in lat­er years attempts at intro­duc­ing pro­grams like sex edu­ca­tion and pro­grams pro­mot­ing a more tol­er­ant atti­tude toward oth­ers. In cal­en­dar year 2018, we should note that pub­lic schools are under attack from the far right, and not just in the per­son of school shoot­ers. Bet­sy De Vos, Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, is push­ing for fed­er­al fund­ing of parochial schools, enabling of for-prof­it col­leges. The GOP and far right are push­ing home school­ing as an alter­na­tive to pub­lic edu­ca­tion and the fur­ther slash­ing of fed­er­al and state bud­gets, which inevitably harms pub­lic edu­ca­tion. We note that pub­lic schools are a major font of social aware­ness. Students–ideally–encounter and devel­op a greater under­stand­ing and tol­er­ance for oth­ers in pub­lic schools. Pub­lic edu­ca­tion is a major fea­ture of social cohe­sion, and its dis­so­lu­tion a major step toward the imple­men­ta­tion of fas­cism.

Florida High School Shooting: Assist, Greenwald

Accused Flori­da High School shoot­er Niko­las Cruz belonged to, and took para­mil­i­tary train­ing with the Repub­lic of Flori­da: ” . . . a white suprema­cist group . . . .” Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est in analy­sis of the Flori­da shoot­ing is the advo­ca­cy on the part of ROF leader Jor­dan Jereb for the “lone wolf/leaderless resis­tance” strat­e­gy: ” . . . . A train­ing video the group post­ed online shows mem­bers prac­tic­ing mil­i­tary maneu­vers in cam­ou­flage cloth­ing and salut­ing each oth­er, along with music with the lyric: ‘They call me Nazi / and I’m proud of it.’ In the weeks before the attack, on Gab, a social media net­work some­times used by white nation­al­ists, Jereb had recent­ly praised Nor­we­gian mass killer Anders Breivik as a ‘hero.’ He also post­ed a dia­grammed strat­e­gy for using the Repub­lic of Flori­da mili­tia to cre­ate ‘lone wolf activists.’ . . . .” In FTR #888 we not­ed Glenn Green­wald’s sig­na­ture efforts as a lawyer for Nazi groups, neu­tral­iz­ing their lia­bil­i­ty for civ­il suits. With­out Cit­i­zen Green­wald’s efforts, vic­tims and the fam­i­lies of vic­tims might have been able to exact civ­il lia­bil­i­ty from Repub­lic of Flori­da for their suf­fer­ing. Good job Glenn! Good job Green­wald apol­o­gists! All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed. iat­ed.

FTR #970 Partying Like It’s 1932, Part 2: The Japanese Deep State

Reca­pit­u­lat­ing key the­mat­ic ele­ments of the pre­vi­ous program–an omi­nous res­o­nance between Japan­ese revi­sion­ist schools Tsukamo­to, Morit­o­mo Gakuen and the Native-Land-Lov­ing School, some of whose alum­ni assas­si­nat­ed Japan­ese prime min­is­ter Inukai on May 15, 1932. The “May 15th Inci­dent,” as it is known, was a key ele­ment in the rise of fas­cism in Japan.

A pas­sage from Hugh Byas’s 1942 text encom­pass­es the dynam­ic:

“. . . . In 1939, his [Kos­aburo Tachibana’s] admir­ers enabled him to estab­lish a school. He called it the Native-Land-Lov­ing School (Aiky­o­juku). Every­body in Japan with a mes­sage to deliv­er or an axe to grind opens a school. . . . Those schools in the hands of the patri­ot­ic soci­eties are at once a method of train­ing young men for strong-arm work and a plau­si­ble excuse for extort­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the rich and timid. . . .”

Pro­gress­ing down­ward from the upper tiers of the polit­i­cal struc­ture, Japan­ese fas­cism stems from the Nip­pon Kagai (“Japan Con­fer­ence”), whose mem­bers exert pro­found influ­ence in the admin­is­tra­tion of Shin­zo Abe, as well as the Japan­ese par­lia­ment.

Fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of the dynam­ics under­ly­ing the Japan­ese deep state is aware­ness of the rela­tion­ship between the pow­er­ful Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions, the zaibat­su, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the inter­na­tion­al car­tel sys­tem. FTR #905 exam­ines this rela­tion­ship at con­sid­er­able length.

Anoth­er impor­tant ele­ment in this dynam­ic is Gold­en Lily–the sys­tem­at­ic loot­ing of Asia by Japan in World War II and the use of the bil­lions in recov­ered gold to fund the re-insti­tu­tion of fas­cist infra­struc­ture in Japan, U.S. covert oper­a­tions and the clan­des­tine but­tress­ing of finan­cial and gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions around the world. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram.)

With much of the world’s atten­tion focused on the blus­ter­ing between Kim Jong-Un and Kim Jong-Trump, the fact that Japan has had a clan­des­tine nuclear weapons pro­gram since the 1960s has gone unre­port­ed:

” . . . . The Unit­ed States delib­er­ate­ly allowed Japan access to the Unit­ed States’ most secret nuclear weapons facil­i­ties while it trans­ferred tens of bil­lions of dol­lars worth of Amer­i­can tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plu­to­ni­um since the 1980s, a Nation­al Secu­ri­ty News Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion reveals. . . . The NSNS inves­ti­ga­tion found that the Unit­ed States has known about a secret nuclear weapons pro­gram in Japan since the 1960s, accord­ing to CIA reports.

. . . . The Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush admin­is­tra­tions per­mit­ted sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy and nuclear mate­ri­als to be trans­ferred to Japan despite laws and treaties pre­vent­ing such trans­fers. High­ly sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy on plu­to­ni­um sep­a­ra­tion from the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s Savan­nah Riv­er Site and Han­ford nuclear weapons com­plex, as well as tens of bil­lions of dol­lars worth of breed­er reac­tor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safe­guards against pro­lif­er­a­tion. Japan­ese sci­en­tist and tech­ni­cians were giv­en access to both Han­ford and Savan­nah Riv­er as part of the trans­fer process.

While Japan has refrained from deploy­ing nuclear weapons and remains under an umbrel­la of U.S. nuclear pro­tec­tion, NSNS has learned that the coun­try has used its elec­tri­cal util­i­ty com­pa­nies as a cov­er to allow the coun­try to amass enough nuclear weapons mate­ri­als to build a nuclear arse­nal larg­er than Chi­na, India and Pak­istan com­bined. . . .

. . . . That secret effort was hid­den in a nuclear pow­er pro­gram that by March 11, 2011– the day the earth­quake and tsuna­mi over­whelmed the Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi Nuclear Plant – had amassed 70 met­ric tons of plu­to­ni­um. Like its use of civil­ian nuclear pow­er to hide a secret bomb pro­gram, Japan used peace­ful space explo­ration as a cov­er for devel­op­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed nuclear weapons deliv­ery sys­tems. . . .”

Key play­ers on the Japan­ese land­scape, such as Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa (the self-pro­claimed “world’s rich­est fas­cist”) embody the Japan­ese deep state, oper­at­ing from the 1930’s onward in con­junc­tion with the Japan­ese patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties, the zaibat­su, Gold­en Lily and the clan­des­tine fas­cist polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture that is increas­ing­ly vis­i­ble.

Sasasakawa launched and fund­ed Sasasakawa Peace Foun­da­tion USA, which might be viewed in the same light as “The Adolf Hitler Foun­da­tion for the Study of Peace and Social Jus­tice.” One of its schol­ars (now with the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion) is Jef­frey Hor­nung, a fre­quent “go-to guy” for the media.

After review­ing Sasakawa and Kodama, espe­cial­ly their links to the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, the pro­gram notes that Abe’s grand­fa­ther, Nobo­suke Kishi was Kodama’s cell­mate in Sug­amo prison. Kishi also signed Japan’s dec­la­ra­tion of war against the U.S. ” . . . . Dur­ing World War II, he was vice min­is­ter of muni­tions and min­is­ter of com­merce and indus­try, active­ly involved in slave labor. Along the way, he made a per­son­al for­tune in side-deals with the zaibat­su. . . .In 1948, when his release from prison was pur­chased by Kodama, Kishi began orga­niz­ing the finan­cial base of the LDP, using Kodama’s black gold and injec­tions of M‑Fund cash. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the pro­found con­nec­tions of the Japan­ese zaibat­su, the deep state asso­ci­at­ed with that, and Amer­i­can diplo­mats who rebuffed a suit by Allied POW’s to get com­pen­sa­tion for hav­ing been used as Japan­ese slaves.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-Japanese Air Force chief-of-staff Toshio Tam­agami’s view that Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for World War II.
2.-Tamagami’s view that Japan should acquire nuclear weapons.
3.-Tamagami’s assess­ment that Japan­ese aggres­sion in World War II ben­e­fit­ed the occu­pied coun­tries.
4.-Tamagami’s sup­port from many promi­nent Japan­ese politi­cians and mil­i­tary fig­ures.
5.-Japanese Finance Min­is­ter, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Taro Aso’s admis­sion that his fam­i­ly’s coal min­ing com­pa­ny used slave labor.
6.-Discussion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Aso Coal Min­ing com­pa­ny may have been involved in stor­ing some of the Gold­en Lily booty.
7.-Discussion of the fact that Aso, as Finance Min­is­ter, would have been involved with the M‑Fund and its financ­ing of Japan­ese pol­i­tics.

FTR #969 Partying Like It’s 1932: Update on the Re-Emergence of Japanese Fascism

In the sum­mer of 2017, jour­nal­is­tic focus in Asia has been on Korea and its nuclear capa­bil­i­ty. The growth of Japan­ese fas­cism, in con­trast, has large­ly passed beneath the intel­lec­tu­al radar. Fur­ther devel­op­ing cov­er­age in pre­vi­ous broad­casts, this pro­gram updates the re-emer­gence of the polit­i­cal forces that drove the con­quests of Impe­r­i­al Japan, as well as attempts to insti­tute an Orwellian re-write of the past.

Key the­mat­ic ele­ments of the broad­cast include an omi­nous res­o­nance between Japan­ese revi­sion­ist schools Tsukamo­to, Morit­o­mo Gakuen and the Native-Land-Lov­ing School, some of whose alum­ni assas­si­nat­ed Japan­ese prime min­is­ter Inukai on May 15, 1932. The “May 15th Inci­dent,” as it is known, was a key ele­ment in the rise of fas­cism in Japan.

“. . . . In 1939, his [Kos­aburo Tachibana’s] admir­ers enabled him to estab­lish a school. He called it the Native-Land-Lov­ing School (Aiky­o­juku). Every­body in Japan with a mes­sage to deliv­er or an axe to grind opens a school. . . . Those schools in the hands of the patri­ot­ic soci­eties are at once a method of train­ing young men for strong-arm work and a plau­si­ble excuse for extort­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the rich and timid. . . .”

Pro­gress­ing down­ward from the upper tiers of the polit­i­cal struc­ture, Japan­ese fas­cism stems from the Nip­pon Kai­gi (“Japan Con­fer­ence”), whose mem­bers exert pro­found influ­ence in the admin­is­tra­tion of Shin­zo Abe, as well as the Japan­ese par­lia­ment.

In addi­tion to open­ly sanc­tion­ing anti-Kore­an racism and net­work­ing with orga­ni­za­tions that pro­mote that doc­trine, sev­er­al mem­bers of Abe’s gov­ern­ment net­work with Japan­ese neo-Nazis. Some of those Nazi acolytes advo­cate using the Nazi method for seiz­ing pow­er in Japan. Is Abe’s gov­ern­ment doing just that?

In addi­tion to finance min­is­ter (and deputy prime-min­is­ter) Taro Aso, for­mer defense min­is­ter Tomi Ina­da and inte­ri­or min­is­ter Sanae Takaichi are appar­ent expo­nents of Nazi polit­i­cal method­ol­o­gy. ” . . . . Ina­da made news ear­lier this month after pho­tos cir­cu­lated of her and anoth­er female in the new cab­i­net pos­ing with a neo-Nazi par­ty leader. Both denied know­ing the neo-Nazi well but lat­er were revealed to have con­tributed blurbs for an adver­tise­ment prais­ing the out-of-print book Hitler’s Elec­tion Strat­e­gy. Coin­ci­den­tally, Vice-Prime Min­is­ter [and Finance Minister–D.E.],Taro Aso, is also a long-time admir­er of Nazi polit­i­cal strat­egy, and has sug­gested Japan fol­low the Nazi Par­ty tem­plate to sneak con­sti­tu­tional change past the pub­lic. . . . it is a lit­tle wor­ri­some that [Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter] Sanae Takaichi . . . is the oth­er female min­is­ter who was pho­tographed with a neo-Nazi leader and is a fan of Hitler. . .”

Abe appears to be using a super­fi­cial pseu­do-fem­i­nism to “sneak con­sti­tu­tion­al change past the pub­lic.” All five of his female cab­i­net appointees are mem­bers of Nip­pon Kai­gi (two resigned short­ly after being appoint­ed.) The actu­al views of these women toward wom­en’s rights belie their fem­i­nist cre­den­tials. ” . . . . The new­ly appoint­ed Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter, Sanae Takaichi, while serv­ing on the LDP’s Pol­i­cy Research coun­cil, sug­gest­ed that the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment rescind the Kono State­ment in 2015, on Japan’s 70th anniver­sary of its sur­ren­der from World War II. [11] The Kono State­ment was a land­mark 1993 apol­o­gy issued by the for­mer Chief Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary that apol­o­gized for the ‘com­fort women:’ 200,000 pri­mar­i­ly Kore­an women forced into sex­u­al slav­ery by the Japan­ese mil­i­tary. Anoth­er min­is­ter, Eriko Yaman­tani, has pre­vi­ous­ly made com­ments that denied the exis­tence of ‘com­fort women.’ . . . .”

Much of the pro­gram focus­es on Shin­zo (and wife Akie) Abe’s sup­port for the Morit­o­mo Gakuen.

1.-Akie Abe was the hon­orary prin­ci­pal of the Morit­o­mo Gakuen (still being con­struct­ed) and con­tributed a mil­lion yen toward its con­struc­tion.
2.-Abe him­self appar­ent­ly donat­ed mon­ey to the con­struc­tion of Morit­o­mo Gakuen.
3.-Tomomi Ina­da sup­port­ed Morit­o­mo Gakuen, hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed the school as a lawyer. She lat­er claimed she could not remem­ber hav­ing done so.
4.-Moritomo Gakuen chief Yasunori Kagoike is a mem­ber of Nip­pon Kai­gi.
5.-Moritomo Gakuen appar­ent­ly ben­e­fit­ed from favors from Taro Aso’s finance min­istry.

High­light­ing the his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance between Tsukamoro and Morit­o­mo Gakuen and the Native Land-Lov­ing School, the pro­gram recounts the May 15th Inci­dent.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-The vir­u­lent, pro-fas­cist revi­sion­ism of bil­lion­aire Japan­ese hote­lier Toshio Motoya, whose writ­ings por­tray Japan as a hero­ic lib­er­a­tor in World War II and deny the Rape of Nanking.
2.-Motoya’s affil­i­a­tion with Nip­pon Kai­gi.
3.-Motoya’s spon­sor­ship of Toshio Tam­aga­mi, the for­mer head of the Japan­ese Air Self Defense Force, who has blamed World War II on Franklin D. Roo­sevelt and “com­mu­nists” in his admin­is­tra­tion.
4.-Taro Aso’s view that elder­ly Japan­ese should “hur­ry up and die.”
5.-A curi­ous mass mur­der of elder­ly, dis­abled Japan­ese that sug­gests the killer may have enjoyed pro­tec­tion or spon­sor­ship.